Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel

CHAPTER 25

LIKE A SLEEPWALKER, I shuffled through my forensic anthropology class, which met less than an hour after I left the scene of Jess’s murder. I considered canceling class, but if I canceled class, what was I to do for that hour instead? So I taught. Or went through the motions of teaching. At the end of class, I couldn’t have said what topic I’d just spent an hour lecturing on. The only thing I noticed was that Jason Lane, my creationist student, was conspicuously absent.

After class, my autopilot carried me back to my office; luckily, the sidewalks and ramps from McClung Museum to the base of the stadium all ran downhill; otherwise, I might not have had the energy or will to make it. The two flights of stairs up to my sanctuary nearly overwhelmed me. Once inside, I closed the door-a rare gesture for me, and a sign of serious trouble. Slumping in my chair, I stared out the grimy windows, through the crisscrossed girders, at-what? Not at the river, although it continued to flow through downtown and alongside the campus. Not at the hills above the far shore, though they remained green and solid. Not at the sky or the sun, though they remained inexplicably, unfeelingly bright.

I could not recall ever before sitting in my office idly, doing nothing. It wasn’t that I had nothing to do-I had a stack of tests to grade, I had at least a dozen articles to review for the three anthropology and forensic journals on whose editorial boards I served. Then there was the textbook revision I’d agreed to do nearly a year ago, a chore that always seemed to take a backseat to forensic cases. Cases like my forensic examination of Craig Willis’s battered skull. Trouble was, I couldn’t get past the fact that I’d been asked to conduct that exam and write that report by Jess Carter. And now Jess was dead.

Craig Willis’s murder still needed to be solved; Jess’s death might slow the investigation down, but it wouldn’t stop it. In fact, my e-mail in-box already contained a memo indicating that Garland Hamilton would step in temporarily to fill Jess’s shoes in Chattanooga, just as Jess had filled in for Hamilton here in Knoxville while his medical license was under review. But knowing that the wheels of justice would keep turning, however slowly, did not give me the strength to put my own shoulder to the wheel right now.

I opened the cardboard box that contained Willis’s skull and lifted it out, along with the top of the cranial vault. Setting the skull on a doughnut-shaped cushion, I stared at its shattered visage as if some clue to Jess’s murder might be encoded in the fracture lines etched in Willis’s bones. A connection of some sort existed, I felt sure, but what, precisely, was the link? Or who?

Jess’s body had been bound to the research corpse we’d used as a stand-in for Willis at the Body Farm. The research was meant to narrow down Willis’s time since death. Did that mean that whoever had killed Willis also killed Jess? If so, why? Because he considered Jess a threat; because she was getting too close to the truth? But what was that truth? I had no idea who had killed Willis, and as far as I knew, neither Jess nor the Chattanooga police had any better insight into his murder than I did.

But if Willis’s killer hadn’t murdered Jess, then who had? Who else might have wanted her dead? As a medical examiner, of course, Jess had worked scores of homicides; in theory, any one of those cases might have prompted someone to seek vengeance-a relative of someone whom Jess’s autopsy and testimony had helped send to prison, for instance. But the timing mattered, surely: Why now? Who lately?

My mind flashed back to Willis’s mother, and the irrational fury with which she had attacked Jess. She had accused Jess of destroying her son’s reputation by releasing the information about his being dressed in drag, and-if indeed Jess had been the unnamed source-by speculating that the murder might have been a homophobic hate crime. Could the rage she displayed in my office have intensified after she fled, escalating to the point of murder? She had parted with a vague threat directed at Jess, but in the heat of the moment, people often made threats they never carried out. Besides, if she were the one who killed Jess, why would she have posed Jess’s body in that obscene position, bound to the corpse that was serving as a stand-in for her own son’s body? That didn’t seem to fit. Unless, I thought, by staging Jess’s body that way, she meant to repudiate the theory Jess had mentioned-unless by killing Jess and tying her to the research corpse, she was saying, “Fuck you and fuck your demeaning theory about my son’s death.”

But what if there were no connection? What if whoever had left the threatening messages on Jess’s voicemail had acted on them? In the dim, shifting light that had engulfed me in the hours since I found Jess’s body, I could see things equally well-or equally poorly-from either angle.

Gradually I became aware of my telephone ringing. It had not even occurred to me that, rather than sitting and brooding alone, I could have been talking through what had happened with Jeff or Miranda or somebody else who cared about me. Fortunately, one of those people was now calling me. “It’s Art,” he said. “I just heard about Jess Carter. I am so sorry, Bill. I know you liked her and respected her.”

“I did. More than that, too. We had-hell, I don’t know what to call it, Art-we had started to get involved, I guess you could say.”

“Romantically involved?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” he said. “Well, damn. I bet that would’ve been a good thing for both of you.”

“I think so. Started off mighty nice, though I’m not sure she was completely over her divorce yet. Might’ve gotten bumpy. But might’ve smoothed out again pretty quick. Guess we’ll never know.”

“Man,” he said, “I thought I was sorry to hear the news before. Now I’m a lot more sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Nothing I can think of. I’ve got to go into KPD tomorrow morning for an interview.”

“Why are they having you come in, instead of talking to you at your office?”

“I guess because I found her body.”

“You?”

“Yeah. Lucky me. It was bad, Art. She was nude, and she was tied to that research corpse we had lashed to a tree. Like she was having sex with the corpse.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Son of a bitch. Listen, Art, I’m gonna go now. Thanks for calling.”

“You need anything, you page me. Even if it’s the middle of the night. Especially if it’s the middle of the night. It’s liable to hit you hardest long about then.”

A powerful sense of foreboding told me he was probably right.